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★★★★½
28 May 2017
A movie review of SPOOR. |
“Violence doesn’t bring back the dead,” Janina Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat)
It is as if Agnieszka Holland has turned into a different director, stepping up to another level. SPOOR is vibrant, super-stylish, pounding filmmaking. A murder mystery unfolds, with substance, in a beautiful countryside idyll – representing the surface of civilisation masking barbarism. Peeling away a story to reveal its onion-like layers is one of those unalloyed delights for an audience member. The tragedy is not solely of the human variety. Anger pulsates from the lead and the film. If this were projected on celluloid, rather than digital, one could imagine the frame vibrating out of the gate.
It is as if Agnieszka Holland has turned into a different director, stepping up to another level. SPOOR is vibrant, super-stylish, pounding filmmaking. A murder mystery unfolds, with substance, in a beautiful countryside idyll – representing the surface of civilisation masking barbarism. Peeling away a story to reveal its onion-like layers is one of those unalloyed delights for an audience member. The tragedy is not solely of the human variety. Anger pulsates from the lead and the film. If this were projected on celluloid, rather than digital, one could imagine the frame vibrating out of the gate.
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Is it just me, or do snow-set narratives have an automatic appeal? (One guesses if you live in such an environment, the majesty of this precipitation has long since dissipated from the romantic imagination. Those sitting in London under shades of grey will understand the desire for pronounced variety.) The extreme of living in such cold beauty quickly lends a film an epicness [sic], even if undeserved. SPOOR earns that made-up word. The filmmakers demonstrate a blockbuster budget is unnecessary to create grandeur, if you have your team firing on all creative cylinders. Humans vs. nature, we might predict. SPOOR is an unusual thriller about removing the verses element.
Opening on a voice-over, accompanying striking landscape imagery, stating all things born must die, we are given an economic snapshot of a community infused with ominous foreboding: 4x4s congregate at dawn, a solitary woman walks her dogs, a man keeps mammals in cruel conditions. Wild animals are being hunted illegally off-season. Men start being discovered dead.
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One woman in her 60s, Janina Duszejko, rails against the status quo. She is the town rebel. Her gender and age is a double-edged sword: No one takes her seriously, and as she is invisible she travels under the radar. She is a badass. Every man of a certain age is in love with the lead. It is obvious why: Janina is witty, humanistic, brave, intelligent and fiercely independent.
A revenge movie, a vigilante movie, but sidestepping clichés from those played out genres (that they still appeal show society is still perceived as justice starved). The movie explores an entwined societal and environmental crisis.
The words on SPOOR’s poster encapsulate the film’s themes: Hypocrisy, gluttony, stupidity, ruthlessness, cruelty, corruption, greed, immorality.
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